The Notion of Clause Complex in Systemic Functional Linguistics

The notion of clause complex was suggested to be used in place of the traditional notion of sentence when referring to the logico-semantic unit above the clause because, to some extent,

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The Notion of Clause Complex in Systemic

Functional Linguistics

Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm*

Faculty of Languages and Cultures of English-Speaking countries, VNU University of Languages and International Studies, Phạm Văn Đồng street, Cầu Giấy, Hanoi, Vietnam

Received 6 April 2012 Revised 19 August 2012; Accepted 24 August 2012

Abstract: In this paper, an attempt is made to explore the notion of clause complex in systemic

functional linguistics Conducted in the light of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the exploration is aimed at three dimensions: the composition of a clause complex, the location of the clause complex in the overall linguistic system, and the functional organization of the clause complex

Keywords: Clause, clause complex, taxis, univariate, multivariate, paratactic relation, hypotactic relation, expansion, projection

1 Introduction *

Clause complex is the notion introduced by

Halliday [1] in his An Introduction to

Functional Grammar The notion of clause

complex was suggested to be used in place of

the traditional notion of sentence when referring

to the logico-semantic unit above the clause

because, to some extent, it seems to enable

further analysis of the spoken speech in

addition to the traditional study on written

language What is a clause complex? Where is

the clause complex located in the overall

linguistic system? A nd how is the clause

complex organized functionally? These

_

* Tel.: 84-989669422

Email: minhtambb@gmail.com

questions will be addressed in some detail in this paper

2 What is a clause complex?

As the name suggests, a clause complex is made up of clauses In order to answer the question: what makes the clause complex, some attempt is made to examine the notion of clause, the combination of clauses to make up the clause complex, and a brief distinction between the notion of clause complex and the traditional notion of sentence as well

2.1 The notion of clause in the light of SFL

As the highest unit in the grammatical rank, the clause is viewed in the light of systemic

functional linguistics as a grammatical resource

for all the three language metafunctions:

construing the world, enacting social roles, and

presenting information Halliday [1] points out

that there are 3 lines of meaning in a clause: the

textual meaning, the interpersonal meaning, and

the ideational meaning, or to put it differently, the clause has three metafunctions: textual, interpersonal, and ideational metafunctions as can be illustrated through figure 1 and figure 2 below

The professor was analyzing the functions that a clause can perform CLAUSE MEANING

Fig 1 Three lines of meaning in a clause – 1

wondered Jim

did wonder

how the analysis would help CLAUSE MEANING

Mood (Jim + did) Residue (wonder + how the analysis would help) Interpersonal

Fig 2 Three lines of meaning in a clause – 2

As can be seen, a clause has meaning as a

message, a quantum of information which is the

complex of at least two constituents of Theme

and Rheme in its THEMATIC structure

Traditionally, Theme is taken as what is going

to be discussed in the message and Rheme as

the discussion while SFL sees Theme as the

departure of the message –the ground from

which the clause is taking off [1] In the finite

clause, in which the verb element is conjugated

in number and person with the subject, Theme

is explicit but in the non-finite clause, in which

the verb is not conjugated in number and person

with the subject, Theme is hidden, and can be

recovered in the context

A clause also has meaning as an exchange,

or a move Through the system of MOOD, it is

organized as an interactive event involving

speaker, or writer, and audience MOOD is, in

general terms, the function of the clause, which

is realized through Mood (Subject and Finite)

and Modality [1] In speaking, the speaker adopts for himself a particular role, and in doing so, assigns the listener a complementary role which he wishes him to adopt in his turn

As regards speech role, either the speaker is giving something to the listener, or demanding something from him In the clause the subject is the guarantee of the exchange In the finite clause, mood is explicit whereas in the non-finite clause, mood is non-explicit

A clause has meaning as a representation, or

a figure, a construal of the going-ons in human experience, with the actor as the active participant in that process The clause represents a pattern of experience through the system of TRANSITIVITY: processes, participants, and circumstances This embodies the principle for modeling experience – “the principle that reality is made up of processes” [1:106] In the clause, participants are decided

by the process, and circumstances are what

surrounds the process Process is the

indispensible part in both finite and non-finite

clauses

It is no exaggeration to accept clause as the

central unit of language which can manifest all

the three metafunctions of the language; and

there seems to be, consequently, no actual need

for any further function to be realized by a

higher grammatical unit than the clause

However, when classifying clauses into major

clauses and minor clauses, only major clauses

can demonstrate all the systems of MOOD,

TRANSITIVITY, and THEME; minor clauses,

including calls and exclamations, have no such

systems

2.2 What makes a clause complex?

In their use of language, people in many

cases tend to expand their arguments outwards

by combining, or complexing the original

clause with other related clauses into series of

clauses with the main clause as the core of the

message and the coordinate or subordinate

clauses as the peripheral information added to

reinforce the message People in many other

cases use language to describe not only the non-linguistic phenomena but to report or quote the linguistic phenomena as well, allowing the reported or quoted clauses to enter into a combination of clauses as the projected part in the whole combination - the secondary use of language That is how clause complexes are constructed from clauses As the single independent clause can be thought of as the linguistic expression of a situation, the combination of several clauses together to form

a larger unit – a complex of clauses or a clause complex - can be thought of as the linguistic expression of a complex situation While a simplex of clause or a clause simplex is a clause itself, a clause complex can be built up from more than one clause linked together in certain systematic and meaningful ways

A question to be answered is: “Is the clause complex the grammatical unit above the clause?” The illustration can be seen from the following combination of the two clauses analyzed in the previous part into a clause complex:

Fig 3 Combining clauses into clause complex

It is demonstrated from the analysis of the

clause complex above that the clause complex

is a univariate structure, not a multivariate

structure Any grammatical unit in the

grammatical rank scale is a multivariate unit in

that it can realize the immediate unit above it and is realized by the immediate unit below it, viz a word is realized by different morphemes, free and bound, which functions differently in the words, different words of different parts of

wondered While the

professor

was analyzing the functions

that a clause can perform,

Jim

did wonder

how the analysis would help

CLAUSE MEANING

(Jim + did)

Residue (wonder + how the analysis would help)

interpersonal

Con-

junc-tive

material

mental

speech and different functions The fact that the

constituents of a unit structure are different in

realization and functions means that the

structure of a unit on the rank scale is always

multivariate Combining the clauses into clause

complex is just like assembling the details to

make a new structure in which the details

coexist but each works in its own way In the

clause complex, one clause is put next to the

other, so the clause complex is still at the same

rank as the clause

The exemplifying clause complex is seen as

univariate structure as it is composed of two

clauses, which are two independent realization

patterns of two different systems of MOOD,

Grammatically, when attaching the clauses

together into a clause complex, no new system

is created The clause complex is actually the

plain combination of separate units, no units

change themselves to fit the others The more

clauses are involved in the clause complex, the

more systems of MOOD, THEME, and

TRANSITIVITY are, mechanically, added to

the complex structure while the MOOD,

THEME, and TRANSITIVITY of each clause

are still reserved and not affected by one

another This means that, in theory, the clause complex can be extended as much as the speaker / writer wants In other words, what distinguishes the clause complex from the grammatical units in the rank scale is its open-endedness because it is not a pre-defined whole

As can be seen in the complex above, there

is no difference in MOOD, THEME, and TRANSITIVITY when the two clauses stand independently as two clause simplexes, and when they combine into the structure of a clause complex The relation between the clauses cannot be read from the forms, but from

a close look at the meaning of the clauses The speaker / writer conveys some certain intended meaning of coordination or subordination through the way s/he combines the clauses, and the original clause from which the complex is extended can be traced by the listener / reader basing on the semantic relations between the clauses The clause complex is accordingly more of a semantic unit rather than a grammatical unit The answer to the question posed above is: a clause complex is not a grammatical unit above the clause It is at the same rank as the clause, just as other univariate units do

GROUP GROUP GROUP COMPLEX

WORD WORD WORD COMPLEX MORPHEME

MORPHEME MORPHEME COMPLEX

Fig 4 The rank of the clause complex The complex manifests the same three

metafunctions of language as each of its

constituent clauses does If the clause is a single

move, the clause complex is a sequence of

moves If the clause is a single message, the clause complex is a sequence of messages, with more than one thematic structure If a clause represents a single linguistic phenomenon, a

clause complex represents a sequence of

linguistic phenomena logically connected by

semantic relations; therefore clause complex is

a logical combination of clauses The definition

of clause complex to be arrived at here is: a

clause complex is a logical combination of

clauses; it is a logico-semantic unit above the

clause

If each clause in a clause complex manifests

the representational function of the language,

the combination of clauses into the clause

complex manifests the logical function of the

language, which means how the messages, the

exchanges, or the representations in the

language are meaningfully linked It is an

on-going development constructed through

semantic relations The clause complex

structure is therefore emergent; its impressive

intricacy emerges as the speaker expands the

clause complex

2.3 Clause Complex vs Sentence

As clause complex is a combination of

clauses, and the traditional sentence is also

made up from clauses, there is a need for

differentiating the two notions to see why the

notion of clause complex is proposed while the

notion of sentence has long been of widespread

use

Sentence is a traditional notion that has

been discussed in depth and at length in plenty

of linguistic studies There are different ways to

classify sentences and different ways to name

the subtypes Sentences can be classified into

just simple sentence and complex sentence [2],

or simple sentence, complex sentence, and

compound sentence [3], [4], or into simple

sentence, coordinate sentence, and complex

sentence [5], or into simple sentence and

non-simple sentence [6], [7], [8], [9] The further

classification of non-simple sentence is also varied as well The non-simple sentences can be divided basing on either semantic relations (coordinate or subordinate [6], [7]) or syntactic relations (complex sentence, compound sentences using conjunctives, compound sentences using correlative structures, compound sentences using juxtaposition [3],

[6], [10])

An obvious distinction between sentence and clause complex is that a sentence is not always higher than the clause while a clause complex is always a complex of more than one clause A sentence can consist of only one clause – a simple sentence (in this case a sentence coincides with the clause and, therefore, cannot be considered a unit higher the clause) or a group of clauses: (i) an independent clause with one (or more than one) embedded clause(s) – also called a simple sentence, (ii) an independent clause with one (or more than one) subordinate clause(s) acting as elements of the independent clauses – called a complex sentence, and (iii) two (or more) coordinated independent clauses of equal footing – called a compound sentence In this case, where a sentence is a group of clauses, it is the unit higher than the clause A sentence can, accordingly, adequately be accounted for by

introducing the concepts of clause simplex: a

unit with only one element clause and clause complex: a combination of two or more clauses

into a larger unit Without rejecting the use of the term “sentence”, since this would involve practical difficulties, given its long-standing use

in studies of grammar, SFL therefore usually

prefers the term clause complex for the

logico-semantic combination of clauses

Another difference between a sentence and

a clause complex is: a sentence is only a constituent of writing, while a clause complex

is a constituent of lexicogrammar The use of

the traditional term sentence as the unit above

the clause poses the observable obstacle of

hindering researchers from going further into

the study of spoken speech To make it clearer,

for most native speakers of any language, a

sentence is something that starts with a capital

letter and comes between full stops, leading to

the fact that sentence is an idealization of

written language, but it is difficult to impose

this “sentence” rank on spoken language

Sentence is therefore a category associated

primarily with the written language and can be

described as an orthographical and rhetorical

unit In fact, a wide variety of units, from a

rhetorical-orthographical point of view, can

constitute a sentence The sentences in the

passage below are good demonstration of this

variety

Fueled: big rise in hospital visits due to

mixing energy drinks with drugs And the

energy drink lobby appears surprised at the

numbers […] Fair enough But it's worth

noting that the drinks the ABA represents (Red

Bull, Monster, Rockstar) have ushered in

popularity of mixing caffeine and alcohol

(The Atlantic magazine Nov 23 rd , 2011)

Structurally, a sentence is composed of

clauses but rhetorically and orthographically it

need not be The examples are the two

sentences “Fueled: big rise in hospital visits

due to mixing energy drinks with drugs” and

“Fair enough” in the passage above What

marks them as sentences here is merely the

punctuation – the full stops However, in

spontaneous speech it is often difficult to

determine where one sentence ends and another

begins [1] The term sentence is appropriate for

a prosodic unit where the identification of a

sentence can be aided by the orthographical

rules of punctuation and capitalization When a

spontaneous conversation is transcribed into

writing, there could be disagreement as to

where sentence divisions lie, as in the following extract used by Matthiessen [10] from a casual conversation during a tea break at a workplace demonstrates how clause complex happens across turns:

||| M: I’m about to throw Joanne out the

window ||| F: Joanne who? ||| M: Latimer ||| F:

Why? ||| (1)M: She gets really pushy ||| I’m looking for a file for Adam, || Kerry handed me three others || and I was in the middle of finding the third one for her ||| (i)A: Kerry gave you

three, did she? ||| M: Yeah, || you know, they

had to be done ||| → (2)And Joanne came up || and she said, || "Oh, can you do this?" || and I said, || "Look you're at the end of a very long line: || be prepared to wait || and she said, ||

"Well, she's at the Oncology clinic right now." || and I said, || "But these have to be done as well;

|| I can't help || and sort of smiled all the way through it || and she went, || I said, || "Look, it's three minutes to three; || these should be done in a minute || if you want to wait till then || and she went || (sigh) ahhh || then she went away || and I thought || “Oh yeah, * end of story” ||| (ii)A: * She gets very worried ||| M: →

(3)

And then she came back in again || and um she said, || "Are those files there; || did Kerry give you those files there?" || and I knew || what she was going to say next || and I said, || "Ah, among others," || and um, she went, || "Oh, oh they can wait until after this one, || 'cause they're not needed, okay." || and I said * |||

(iii)

F: * Why couldn't she grab someone else? |||

M: Because Liz and I are the only ones doing them || and they don't know that Ann can do

them ||| → (4)But um, I said, || "Look Liz is going” || I said, || "Look, you know it's nearly three o'clock now; || Liz should be back any second now." || I said, || "Anyway, I've got afternoon tea now || and I've got to go to taping." |||

(* marks the overlapping in the

conversation,

→ marks where the narrative is picked up

again) corpus) [10]

The whole narrative of M is the thread

linking 4 separate but logically connected parts:

(1), (2), (3), and (4) The narrative gets

suspended three times: (i) the first time, A asks

M a question as a reaction to information from

the narrative, and M answers the question

before she returns to the narrative; (ii) the

second time, A makes a statement (which

overlaps with M’s end of story), commenting

on Joanne’s behaviour, but M does not reply to

this and continues her narrative; and (iii) the

third time, F asks M a question arising out of

the narrative, which M answers before picking

up the narrative thread again These exchanges

are possible partly because of the serial nature

of the structure of clause complexing On the

one hand, the series can be suspended — and

even aborted — when local conditions so

demand On the other hand, the series can be

resumed after each suspension: notice that each

time M has suspended, she picks up again with

either and or but In fact, the whole narrative

sequence can be interpreted as a single

complex, extended serially across three turns,

which evidently locates the clause complex

under the system of logical function

The term clause complex, as illustrated in

the example, seems to help to recover the

phenomenon of clause combining from the

constraints of written language and open the

way to observe clause combination in the

spoken speech It enables us to describe both

the structural relations holding between the

clauses and the logico-semantic relations which

unite them The clause complex is also distinct

from the sentence in that it can, simultaneously, happen cross-turn while the sentence cannot

Without denying the traditional term of

sentence, the term clause complex used to

denote all subtypes of sentences except the one-clause sentences – the one-clause simplexes, appears to be of some more assistance than term sentence in linguistic analyses

3 Where is the Clause Complex Located in the Overall Linguistic System?

3.1 The Position of Clause Complex in the System of Metafunctions

As mentioned in 2.2, a clause is a multifunctional construct; it is a textual

message, an exchange, and a representation

A clause complex is thus a sequence of messages, exchanges, and representations

As regards the textual metafunction, the systems of THEME, conjunctions, and ellipsis all appear in the clause complex While the system of theme is a resource for assigning textual prominence to constituent clause in the clause complex, the textual system of conjunction is concerned with the transition from one clause to another in the complex, providing the resources for indicating rhetoric relations between clauses In addition, in the clause complex of subordination, ellipsis is allowed in subordinate clause, not in super-ordinate clause because no independent major clause can work without Thematic Structure and the super-ordinate clause in the clause complex is always a major clause

As regards the interpersonal metafunction, the MOOD system is somehow constrained in that: mood is open to free clauses but not to bound clauses The contrast of “free” and

“bound” is thus the contrast in interpersonal

status in the development of clause complex In

the clause complex of coordination, the system

of MOOD is explicit in all constituent clauses

In the clause complex with subordinate relation,

the super-ordinate clause is prioritized as the

focal message, while the subordinate clause(s)

is just the expanding message The MOOD

system of the super-ordinate clause therefore

needs be explicit, the clause must be finite

Meanwhile, as the expanding part of the clause

complex, the subordinate clause(s) is either

finite, or non-finite

When it is interpreted metafunctionally,

clause complex turns out to be engendered by

the ideational metafunction: the experiential

metafunction and the logical metafunction, but

more specifically, by the logical mode of the

ideational metafunction

As regards the experiential metafunction,

the clause complex is the resource for

construing the speaker’s experience The clause

complex represents the flow of events in the

world as sequence of quanta of changes The

system of TRANSITIVITY, in turn, is the

resource for construing each quantum of change

as a configuration of processes, participants

directly involved in the process, and more

indirectly involved circumstances In the clause

complex, different processes (typically

involving different participants and different

circumstances) are chained in a meaningful

way

All complexes are structured as series of

related elements: each relation represents a new

expansion of the complex The complexes are

developed link by link; each pair of linked

elements is called a nexus [1] The nature of

these links is determined by taxis and

logico-semantic relation which concerns with the

logic of the relation forming the nexus: expansion or projection, and the option of stopping or of expanding the complex further

by opening up another nexus through systemic: stop or go on Theoretically, the logical function enables a clause complex to “go on” linearly as much as the speaker wants, even cross-turn in conversation as the speakers can still keep the thread of logic between clauses across turns and the listeners can trace the link

of the suspended chunk of the clause complex thanks to the logico-semantic relations between them

3.2 The Position of Clause Complex in the System of Stratification

Clause complex is located within the lexicogrammatical stratum and, it realizes certain areas in the semantics stratum - the semantic relations, and is realized from elements in the stratum of phonology

With reference to the realization of clause complex from units in phonology, there is a natural relationship between the complexing of clauses in the grammar and the sequencing of tone group in phonology [11] As elements of

an informational unity, the constituent clauses

in clause complexes may be spoken on the same intonation contour, or on the sequence of tone groups for the sake of communication emphasis

Regarding the stratum of semantics, Matthiessen and Thompson propose that clause complexes can be interpreted as the grammaticalization of rhetorical–relational patterning in text [12] At the semantic stratum, texts are organized as rhetorical complexes – passages are linked through rhetorical relations, which are marked explicitly by cohesive conjunction or implicitly through

lexicogrammatical patterns Clause complexing

in the lexicogrammar level is like rhetorical

complexing at semantic level

The position of clause complex in the system of stratification is suggested as in Fig 6 below

:

Fig 6 The Location of Clause Complex in the Overall Linguistic System

4 How is the clause complex organized?

According to Halliday [1] the interrelation

between constituent clauses in clause

complexes can be interpreted in terms of logical

components of the linguistics system: the

functional-semantic relations that make up the

logic of natural language There are two

systemic dimensions in the organization of the

clause complex: one is in the syntactic

dimension - the system of interdependency, or

taxis system which is general to all complexes,

and the other is the semantic dimension – the

logico-semantic system, specifically an

inter-clausal relationship These two together provide the functional framework for describing the organization of clause complex

4.1 The Syntactic Dimension – the Taxis System

The syntactic properties of clause complexes are realized through the interdependency relations between element

transi- -tivity exchange

message

repre- -sentation

mood theme

tone group

foot

syllable

phoneme

CLAUSE

clauses in the clause complexes, which consist

of independency (paratactic) and dependency

(hypotactic) Parataxis relationship in clause

complex is the linking of clauses of equal

status Both the initiating and the continuing

clauses are free, in the sense that each could stand as a functioning whole Hypotactic relationship is the binding of clauses of unequal status, the dominant clause is free, but the dependent clause is not

Clauses

Taxis

Fig 7 Clauses in paratactic and hypotactic clause complexes [13]

Taxis works on a univariate principle: the

reiteration of units of the same functional role

Taxis thus contrasts with embedding, also

called rank-shift In embedding phenomenon,

the embedded clause functions as immediate

constituents of what is called the superordinate

clause The embedded clause is a rank-shifted

clause, which means it operates in the whole as

though they were member of the lower rank

Therefore, embedding relation seems to relate

more to complementation, not complexing, so it

is not considered an interdependency relation

In principle, the paratactic relationship is

logically (i) symmetrical and (ii) transitive, thus

can be exemplified by the “and” relation The

hypotactic relationship is logically (i)

non-symmetrical and “non-transitive”

4.2 The Semantic Dimension – the Logico-semantic Relations

The system of logico-semantic relationship specifies what its name suggests: the particular kind of logical interconnection This is, of course, the ultimate source of logic in its formal and symbolic sense; but since such systems of logic are derived from natural language, not the other way round, it is not very profitable to try and interpret natural-language logic as an imperfect copy of a logic that has been designed The basic distinction in the language system, in the logical-semantic relationship in the clause complex, is between the two types:

expansion and projection, which function in

very different ways Both these types of relationship can be construed between equal and unequal clauses The table below shows various possibilities

Parata

ctic

||| Lectures are in the morning, || office hours are in the

afternoon. |||

||| I said: || “Well, I love the games.”

|||

Hypot

actic

||| If you start trouble, | we’ll finish it || ||| We believe | that he will accept |||

Fig 8 The Logico-semantic Relations

The nature of projection is quite simple: we

use language to talk about phenomena in the

world, but one group of phenomena that can be

talked about is stretches of language If we

include in our message the wording or the meaning of the original language event, we are not directly representing non-linguistic experience but giving a representation of a